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Sachi Kulkarni

different

I can’t seem to shake you. It’s been years, and the ghost of our memories haunt me like they want me to feel for you, but I’m left with nothing inside.

I can’t bring myself to love you again. Not because I can’t, not because it’ll break me, but because I don’t want to. You are no longer what fits into my definition of love. You haven’t been for a long time.

You see, I think I kept holding onto you because you gave me everything when I felt like I had nothing. You gave me purpose when I felt like mine had been tossed out to sea.

And now, you give me anger. You give me drunk texts and sordid pleas for help in finding someone to love but you don’t realise that no one I can give you will love you. No one I can give you will love you like I did, because no one can.

I say this with the strongest conviction, because I’ve learnt that every love is different. You see, you haven’t been my only love. You haven’t been the only one I can lean to when I’m in despair. In fact, now, you’re probably the last one.

Each love shapes you. It builds you and breaks you in ways that probably didn’t even exist before you met them. In ways that probably wouldn’t exist if you didn’t let them. The way I loved you, will be miles apart from the way the next girl will. She will take you and make you into a new being, she will give you everything I couldn’t and more.

But you’re impatient. You’re erratic and irrational and you want me one day but the next day you don’t. You refuse to realise that I’m not here for you anymore. More so, I’m not here to be your resident matrimonial guru or easy sleazy booty call, because I can’t. Because I don’t want to.

You ask me for things that bring me pain, say words that resonate in my mind for days to come and then apologise profusely as though it would counteract the ache that runs through my veins.

Some days, you don’t apologise at all.

People wonder why I let you back into my life constantly. I wonder as well. I’m beginning to think that the “soft spot” I have for you is just an excuse for me to walk back into the fleeting happiness you gave me. I can’t keep doing this anymore.